


a study in hands

by orphan_account



Series: this is the end [24]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s05e04 The End, Hands, M/M, POV Dean Winchester, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 13:14:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2813255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Looking at his hands, you knew that they’d look good covered in paint and wax. They were artists hands, strong and steady but with a finesse that you could only imagine possessing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a study in hands

Your hands are strong. Workers hands, made for being silent. Broad palms with short, thick fingers that end abruptly with threaded fingernails; cleanly trimmed at an appropriate length. They aren’t so short as to crack and bleed but not very long, either. You keep them practical.

Dirt cakes itself into the creases of your hands and, more often than not, there’s blood under your fingernails to match. Your skin is rough and calloused from years of grunt work, years of not caring or being cared for. It doesn’t bother you but you see his frown any time he looks too hard. You wonder if it’s you or what you have had to do that puts the expression on his face and find that you don’t want to know, not really. Not if the answer would make him realize that he always deserved better.

There’s scars littering your palm from all the times you’ve had to draw blood from there, and smaller ones dotting your knuckles from the countless fights. Looking at them, you’d smile and laugh, say something about how the other guy’s face looked, but you always knew the other guy got off better. In most of the bar fights you’d been in, he got to go on living his life after you left town. You’d never had a life to live and you never would; the scars on top of scars proved it. Fight after fight and no change; nothing ever changed. You were always fighting for something.

When you looked at his hands, it was a different story. They were smaller than yours but not by much; he still had broad palms but his fingers where just slightly thinner and longer. His nails were blunt and smooth and his hands were usually clean.

Yes, sometimes dirty found its way on to him but it wasn’t like you; it wasn’t constant. When he washed his hands, it did something; when he looked for forgiveness, he found it. You were stuck trying to pick at the blood and dirt and getting nowhere. You envied him of that, of the ability to get clean.

His skin was thinner than yours, too. It was smooth with only small, new-forming callouses to decorate his palms. The veins on the backs of his hands were blue and purple, forming a galaxy along his bones.

Looking at his hands, you knew that they’d look good covered in paint and wax. They were artists hands, strong and steady but with a finesse that you could only imagine possessing. But he’d never held a paint brush that you knew of, and he’d never get the chance even though he deserved it. He deserved potential and all he got was you and a cabin and the end of the world. Instead of paint brushes he got clove cigarettes.

Your hands only felt like yours when they were held in his. Looking at the contrasts of your skin, the way the light always seemed to favour him and leave you in the shadows, made you realize you were a worker and he was an artist. He’d painted your soul, after all; he hadn’t needed a brush for that.

You touch your fingertips together as the pale yellow light streams through and you hope that you both get what you deserve.


End file.
